Tuesday 30 November 2010

Rare book on display - Bewick's 'History of British Birds'

The rare book on display from our collection is: History of British birds: the figures engraved on wood by T. Bewick. Vol. 1, containing the history and description of land birds. Vol. 2., containing the history and description of water birds. Newcastle, 1797 and 1804.

Balfour Library class mark: HBF 2 (1-2)

The book is open at: Vol. 2, p.54 - Curlew. This is a first edition copy of the work. This woodcut of a curlew beautifully defines the bird’s features, as well as the surrounding water, foliage and rocks, and conveys the sense of movement caused by the wind in the reeds. Bewick was a pioneer of wood engraving technique.

Thomas Bewick, a wood engraver, was born near Eltringham, Northumberland, on 10th or 12th August 1753, and died in Gateshead on 8th November 1828. He was apprenticed aged 14 to Ralph Beilby, a Newcastle engraver who taught him how to engrave metal, silver and copperplate.

Bewick entered into partnership with Beilby in 1777. Beilby apparently did not like wood engraving but Bewick preferred it. His skill soon became evident and well-known in the work he was producing for printers of children’s books and books of fables. He refined the ‘white line’ technique; the block surface was seen as solid black before cutting took place, and each cut made was to create white light. This technique was very expressive, and he handled texture and the balance of light and shade particularly well.

Bewick eventually published his own natural history books that incorporated his own wood engravings. The General History of Quadrupeds was published in 1790. He produced the woodcuts for this in his own time after his days at the workshop, and the text was written by Beilby. For the History of British Birds Bewick wrote the text as well as producing the woodcuts, demonstrating his knowledge and skill as a naturalist as well as an engraver. His publications were especially noted for their ‘tail pieces’, vignettes used to fill space after text. They expressed varied aspects of north-country life, with humour and affection, a love of nature, and often had a moral point to them. These were regarded perhaps even more highly than the main illustrations.

The scientist William Yarrell named the Bewick's swan in honour of Bewick in 1830.

Sources:

Bain, Iain. “Bewick, Thomas (1753–1828).” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed., edited by Lawrence Goldman, May 2005. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/2334 (accessed November 26, 2010).

Colin Campbell. "Bewick, Thomas." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T008554 (accessed November 26, 2010).

Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) http://www.wwt.org.uk/our-work/wetland-wildlife/bewicks-swans

Further reading:

Uglow, Jenny. Nature’s engraver: a life of Thomas Bewick. London: Faber and Faber, 2007. http://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk/jsp/id/Natures_Engraver/9780571223756

Monday 22 November 2010

Attention student book-collectors!

The Rose Book-Collecting Prize

Your chance to win £500

You can enter any type of collection provided it is solely owned by you and has been collected by you. The books do not have to be especially valuable - a collection of paperbacks, put together with imagination, is equally eligible. The contest is open to all current undergraduate and graduate students of the University of Cambridge.

The closing date for entries is the first day of Lent Full Term Tuesday 18 January 2011

Full details of how to enter are given on the University Library website at http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/bookprize.html

Thursday 18 November 2010

New books:

Acoustic communication in insects and anurans: common problems and diverse solutions, by Carl H. Gerhardt and Franz Huber. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press; 2002. Balfour Library shelfmark: Q.7 (51ii). (Overnight Loan Shelves).

Cognition, evolution, and behavior, 2nd ed., by Sara J. Shettleworth. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 2010. Balfour Library shelfmark: GFU (278bii-iii) (Overnight Loan Shelves).

Ecology of deep-sea hydrothermal vents, by Cindy Van Dover. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; 2000. Balfour Library shelfmark: GHR (16ii) (Overnight Loan Shelves).

The evolution of cognition, edited by Cecilia Heyes and Ludwig Huber. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press; 2000. Balfour Library shelfmark: GF (214iii-iv) (Overnight Loan and Open Shelves).

Evolutionary behavioral ecology, edited by David F. Westneat and Charles W. Fox. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 2010. Balfour Library shelfmark: GFU (338i-iv) (Overnight Loan and Open Shelves).

Lewin's genes X, by Jocelyn E. Krebs, Elliott S. Goldstein and Stephen T. Kilpatrick. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers; 2011. Balfour Library shelfmark: EN (137ji-ii) (Overnight Loan Shelves).

Modelling binary data, 2nd ed.
, by David Collett. Boca Raton, FL: Chapman & Hall / CRC; 2003. Balfour Library shelfmark: EBB (89b) (Overnight Loan and Open Shelves).

Primate behavioral ecology, 4th ed., by Karen B. Strier. Upple Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall; 2011. Balfour Library shelfmark: YW.7 (33di-iv) (Overnight Loan and Open Shelves).

Thursday 11 November 2010

Downtime of photocopiers in the Department of Zoology

All the photocopiers in the Department of Zoology will be unavailable for use from 12:00pm on Wednesday 10th November.

New photocopiers and card readers are being installed, which will be available for use from Monday 15th November.

The Balfour Library in the Department does have a scanner which can be used 24/7. It is located at the back of the room that the photocopiers are normally situated in. You must bring a memory stick to save your images onto.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Downtime of ScienceDirect and Scopus this Saturday

Elsevier have notified us that there will be a scheduled outage this weekend for the following SciVerse products:
  • ScienceDirect
  • Scopus
The products and services mentioned above are expected to be offline and unavailable for approximately 9 hours on Saturday, November 13th due to scheduled upgrades from 12:30 - 21:30.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Monday 8 November 2010

Jane's success on an online Web 2.0 course

Over the Summer Vacation Jane Acred, the Assistant Librarian, participated in '23 Things Cambridge', an online Web 2.0 programme for University of Cambridge departmental and college librarians, see: http://23thingscambridge.blogspot.com/.

'23 Things' was a self-directed course designed to introduce University of Cambridge UL, faculty and college library staff to Web 2.0 technologies (such as blogs, wikis, Google documents and apps, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Mendeley etc.). The aim was for staff to spend a little time each week over 12 weeks exploring online tools for communication, promotion, and new ways of working. Throughout the course the practical application and relevance of the tools to the library setting were explored. The programme ran from 24 May to 27 August 2010.

The course was quite demanding - each week participants were introduced to 2 things and were asked to spend 1 hour on each, and to blog about them - but in reality Jane sometimes had to spend much longer than that if the things wouldn't work, and often setting them up took longer than expected.

As a result of the course Jane has introduced using Doodle to schedule the Saturday invigilation rota, created a Google calendar that we can both access, and we are planning to use Delicious to create a list of useful bookmarks for specific types of reader. It has been really useful for Jane to learn about and use the new technologies that our readers are now using. We both now understand them and can develop them to our own advantage, and support our readers' use of them.

Not all of the participants managed to complete the course, but Jane persisted and attended the 'Oscars' style Grand Closing Ceremony at the end of the course, where she received her Amazon gift vouchers. Well done to Jane!

In case you're interested, here's the complete list of Things:

Week 1 (24 May)
• Thing 1 - Set up your Google ID and build an iGoogle page.
• Thing 2 - Add the RSS feed of the Cam23 blog to your iGoogle page.

Week 2 (31 May)
• Thing 3 - Create your own 23 Things blog on which you will record your progress.
• Thing 4 - Register your blog. Add a screenshot. Explore other Cam23 blogs.

Week 3 (07 June)
• Thing 5 - Use Doodle to schedule a peer support meeting with another participant.
• Thing 6 - Sign up for Google Calendar and add it to your iGoogle page.

Week 4 (14 June)
• Thing 7 - Create a Twitter account and interact with other Cam23 ‘tweeple’.
• Thing 8 - Review your blog tags.

Week 5 (21 June)
• Thing 9 - Explore Flickr.
• Thing 10 - Using images and Flickr Creative Commons.

Week 6 (28 June)
• Thing 11 - Explore SlideShare.
• Thing 12 - Investigate Delicious.

Week 7 (05 July)
• Thing 13 - Reflection week. Think about what you’ve explored so far and the tools you may adopt.

Week 8 (12 July)
• Thing 14 - Explore LibraryThing.
• Thing 15 - Create a library or personal LibraryThing account.

Week 9 (19 July)
• Thing 16 - Explore library Facebook pages.
• Thing 17 - Using LinkedIn

Week 10 (26 July)
• Thing 18 - Explore Zotero and Mendeley.
• Thing 19 - Blog about using the Things for library marketing.

Week 11 (02 August)
• Thing 20 - Create a Google Document and share it.
• Thing 21 - Explore podcasting: YouTube, Audacity and iTunes.

Week 12 (09 August)
• Thing 22 - Explore and evaluate a selection of wikis.
• Thing 23 - Explore Wordle and blog about your Cam23 experience.

Postgraduate Toolbox - the number one resource for postgraduates

Brand new for 2010, www.PostgraduateToolbox.net already offers 15,000+ postgrads:
  • Postgraduate advice centres, articles and latest news
  • Free fortnightly eNewsletter with advice and tips from academics and other postgrads.
  • A dedicated Postgraduate Bookstore
  • The hilarious 'GradSchool' cartoon strip by Jon Tollvery
  • Share tips and discuss experiences on postgraduate issues in the forums
  • More competitions and prizes........

Also check out Postgraduate Toolbox's sister site, Graduate Junction - www.GraduateJunction.net - the largest online postgraduate community, providing Masters and PhD researchers from any discipline with an easy way to find other postgrads working on similar projects and to share advice and tips regarding postgraduate life. Find and connect with other postgraduates and build research interest groups as well as entering Graduate Junction's Online Research Poster competition.